Run, Don't Walk

Throughout my entire childhood (which, for today's purposes, covers all the way up until the age of fifteen) there was something I had seen on Sesame St. that confounded me. On some episode or another there had been a skit about how to cross the street safely. The take home message was this: when the light is green, it's okay to walk -- and the corollary to that, when it is red, stay put.

WHAT?

This made no sense to my four-year-old mind and it continued not to make sense until my mind had grown to the ripe old age of 15. Why would you walk when the light is green? Isn't that when cars go? I was completely convinced that Sesame St. was trying to get me killed.

Then, while waiting for an opportunity to cross the street in Boston one day when I was 15, a light went off in my head. They were talking about the red and green light on the walker's traffic signal, not the ones for the cars. I guess they weren't trying to kill me, after all.

For a while I felt pretty stupid about this... why had it taken me so long to realize what most people had probably understood off the bat? But lately I have been driving around Boston a lot, and suddenly I don't feel so bad about myself. Clearly, there are HUNDREDS of people who think it is appropriate to walk when cars have the green light... Sesame St. must have duped them too.

It is unbelievable how brave people become when it comes to crossing the street... Apparently a giant, 4,000-lb hunk of metal traveling forward at a considerable speed is not motivation enough to put a slight jump in peoples step as they calmly amble across the street.

Maybe this courage is rooted in strength in numbers. It is rarely a single person or group of two that boldly jump out in front of moving traffic -- it is always a flock. It's as if they turned to one another before crossing and said, "If we move together, we can make it."

And dammit, they are right. Because as appealing as running each and every one of them over is, it simply isn't something that we drivers are going to do... Even if it requires us to stop so abruptly that we end up wearing our coffees.

So a plea to all pedestrians: save us drivers the dry cleaning fees and frustration, wait for your green light!!